Popularizing Math and Science

In the 1950s, IBM engaged the husband-and-wife design duo, Charles and Ray Eames—known largely for their innovations in the design of chairs—to create a series of educational films and exhibits. These pieces didn’t sell anything or mention IBM or its products. Instead, they sought to translate mathematical and scientific concepts into engaging learning experiences for general audiences.

An early science lab for boys and girls

The support of IBM for science and engineering education for youth stretches back decades. In 1940, the company donated two floors of its building at 310 5th Avenue in New York City to the American Institute, an organization advocating scientific education, for use as a science laboratory for boys and girls. The lab’s objective was to develop young engineers and scientists for “tomorrow,” feeding the pipeline of talent for employers. It opened its doors on February 1, 1940, when it welcomed 30 youths from local science clubs.

Modeling Mathematica, 1960

Charles and Ray Eames spent a year researching and designing Mathematica—the first of more than 30 exhibits they designed for IBM in a period spanning three decades. Together with graphic designer Paul Rand and architects Eliot Noyes and Eero Saarinen, the Eameses brought a modern design sensibility to IBM through their work for the company.

Powers of Ten (1968)

Generations of schoolchildren have viewed Powers of Ten, which offers a stunning visual demonstration of the concept of orders of magnitude. Based on its cultural significance, the US Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry in 1998. A study published in the Journal of Science Education and Technology in 2007 found that when viewed in the classroom, the film improved students’ understanding of relative size as well as their ability to accurately match metric sizes in scientific notation to metric scale.

IBMers sharing expertise in the classroom

Today, IBM promotes science, technology, engineering and math education for youth through nearly a dozen programs. On Demand Community gives IBM employees and retirees a rich set of volunteer resources designed to inspire students around the world to pursue study and careers in these fields. Transition to Teaching, launched in 2006, addresses the current shortage of math and science teachers by providing financial and other support to veteran IBMers transitioning to second careers as teachers. More than 125 IBMers participate in the program, with around 30 graduates now teaching full time.

Why would a corporation do that? The answer says a lot about this particular company’s idea of its purpose. When you just want to sell machines, you describe their features and functions. Maybe you also help people learn how to use them. But when your ambition isn’t just to build information technology, but an information age—that’s different.

From the company’s earliest days, Thomas Watson Sr. had lofty ambitions for its impact on the world. But it was his son who launched what became the shadow function of IBM: educating the world on the nature and potential of information, science and mathematics. This deeper, long-term educational mission was central to Watson Jr.’s notion that “good design is good business.” And central to that mission was the work of the Eameses.

Arguably, the signature example of their efforts for IBM was
Mathematica, the first interactive exhibit to make math its subject. Planning a new science wing to debut in 1961, the California Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles asked IBM for a contribution. The company turned to the Eameses, who designed a display that, in the words of Charles Eames, would “let the fun [of math and science] out of the bag.”

The sprawling exhibit included interactive stations demonstrating concepts such as celestial mechanics, the Möbius strip and projective geometry. At the multiplication cube, 512 lightbulbs arranged in a cube flashed responses to multiplication problems typed into a keyboard by visitors. Elsewhere, wire structures emerged from soapy water. The bubbles that stretched between the wires showed a visual math form of minimal surfaces. Individual viewing stations beckoned guests to watch “peep shows,” where playful animated films offered two-minute lessons on symmetry, powers of numbers and other mathematical concepts.

“In doing an exhibition, as in Mathematica, one deliberately tries to let the fun out of the bag. The catch is that it can’t be any old fun but it must be a very special brand. … The fun must follow all of the rules of the concept involved.”

Charles Eames

IBM exhibition designer

“Mathematica: A World of Numbers and Beyond,” exhibition case study, www.exhibitfiles.org

“Inside the egg: In little less than a minute, you’re hydraulically hoisted 53 feet into the main theater. This puts you in the core of the gunite-sprayed steel egg, about the size of a Navy blimp—115 feet long, 89 feet deep, 58 feet from base to top, which is 90 feet high. There, 14 slide and movie projectors bombard nine random-size screens with a very busy show. If the 30-ton people wall returns you to earth still wondering why data-processing machines are useful, it’s no fault of IBM’s.”

Henry B. Comstock

journalist

“Inside IBM’s World’s Fair ‘Egg’,” Popular Science

July 1964

“Those of us who were lucky enough to be in the audience for the designer Charles Eames’s 1970 Norton lectures at Harvard, where he showed the original version of his film ‘‘Powers of Ten’’ (1968), will never forget its impact. Moving from galaxy to proton, zooming from the edges of the universe to the hand of a man lying on a picnic blanket in a Chicago park and then into a carbon atom on his hand, the film lends the viewer nothing less than a sense of the proportions of the universe.’’

Phil Patton

journalist

“Expanding on ‘Power of Ten’ to Convey Eameses’ Genius,” New York Times

May 13, 1999

“At their core, science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines require creativity to teach and to apply in the real world in order to solve problems and forge new paths. When taught well, these disciplines show young people how to learn, preparing them to approach problems in creative ways, regardless of their future professions. STEM courses also can equip our young people with the critical thinking and problem-solving skills they need to be 21st-century citizens.”

Robin Willner

Vice President of Global Community Initiatives, IBM

“That Creative Spark,” PRISM magazine

October 2010

Mathematica popularized the field of math and delighted viewers with its accessible, informal and hands-on approach—without talking down to its audiences or oversimplifying its complex subjects. It whetted the public appetite for math and science as a way to understand the world, and paved the way for the creation of the experiential exhibits that are common today and emphasized at museums such as San Francisco’s Exploratorium, Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, North Carolina’s Discovery Place, and dozens more.

Mathematica made history: it remained open until 1998 as the longest-running corporate-sponsored museum exhibition to date before touring major US art museums. There is now a permanent
Mathematica installation at Boston’s Museum of Science, and the original exhibition is on permanent display at the New York Hall of Science. Commenting on the installation of
Mathematica there in 2004,
New York Times critic-at-large Edward Rothstein wrote, “It still exudes confidence. It invites attention not by promising participatory sensation but by offering beauty and elegance. It spurs curiosity not by aiming for simplicity but by offering hints of complexity.”

That synthesis of elegance and complexity characterizes the influential body of work—more than 15 films and 30 exhibits—created by the Eameses for IBM. Elements of
Mathematica were replicated on an international stage at the IBM Pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York, in a futuristic installation where visitors ascended into an egg-shaped theatre showing a multimedia Eames presentation that explained the potential of computing to help humankind. Additionally, as film made its way into the classroom as part of Sputnik-era educational reform, thousands of fascinated schoolchildren learned about the scale of the universe by watching the 1968 Eames film
Powers of Ten.

In the half-century since
Mathematica, IBM has continued to champion innovative approaches to teaching and learning math and science, as well as technology and engineering—referred to collectively as STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). In today’s truly global age, IBM has also expanded the reach of its programs. Its web resource TryScience—a collaboration with the New York Hall of Science and member institutions of the Association of Science-Technology Centers—offers online activities, interactive exhibits and live camera “field trips” via websites in nine languages, opening a world of scientific discovery to kids, teachers and parents around the globe.

A companion site launched in 2011, Teachers TryScience, provides middle school teachers with free, standards-based STEM lessons integrated with instructional strategies. Grace Suh, senior program manager with Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs at IBM, says, “Teachers TryScience is designed to give teachers the comprehensive supports they need to implement a lesson effectively, with a focus on hands-on projects that showcase what it is like to work as an engineer.” The site offers teachers a range of resources, including pedagogical information—such as how to work with students in groups or how to teach students with different learning needs and styles—and practical how-to guides, like how to build a wind turbine or a solar car.

Students also are getting inspired by IBMers to study and pursue careers in STEM. As part of On Demand Community—an innovative corporate philanthropy initiative—each year, tens of thousands of IBM employees and retirees donate their time and skills to schools around the world, engaging in hands-on science activities and career days that showcase exciting opportunities in the IT field.

In 2010, IBM spent US$33.7 million on nearly a dozen K-12 education programs, with almost half of those funds supporting programs outside the United States. A series of IBM Technology Camps held each summer in countries throughout the world—including Australia, Canada, Denmark, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Japan—foster scientific and engineering learning among school-age youth, stoking math, science and engineering career aspirations. All-girl camps are among these, designed to help shore up the number of women working in technology careers worldwide.

In September 2011, IBM will help launch a new kind of school it hopes will serve as a global model for robust science and technology instruction. Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) is a public school in Brooklyn, New York, where grades 9-14 students will earn associate degrees in preparation for either continued study at a four-year institution or entry-level IT positions. They will also be able to explore various careers in technology through internship, coaching and mentoring opportunities provided by IBM. The school has already created a lot of buzz, and educators visiting from as far away as the Philippines are eager to replicate the model at home.

Grace Suh says, “In all our programs for young people, we’re focused on creating opportunities where few may exist. The STEM disciplines help prepare students to help solve some of the world’s most deeply entrenched problems. If we’re going to continue to lead over the next 100 years, we need to prepare the next generation of innovators.”

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